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She perused the meats, trying to seem occupied. But then, desperate to talk to someone, she asked him what he thought was good today. “Cornish game hens,” he suggested. She nodded, asking if he could wrap up two. She’d made them once before and they’d turned out all right. As the butcher ripped off a section of paper, he said, “You ever have lamb? This shipment we got in is great. From a local farm. ” And so Joanna said he could wrap up some lamb for her, too. She went for two steaks as well, some hamburger patties—she could freeze it all, she figured—and was even considering ordering a whole goose before her phone rang. It was her mother. Joanna gave the butcher an apologetic smile and picked up her phone.
“So have you heard?” Catherine said. No hello.
“Heard … ?”
“Heard about me, of course. ”
Joanna walked up the condiments aisle. “No …”
Catherine exhaled and paused dramatically. “I’m going into the hospital on Friday. ”
“For what?” “I thought they might have called you. I thought they called emergency contacts for things like this. ”
Joanna leaned on her cart. “Why are you going to the hospital?”
“Oh, honey. It’s too depressing to talk about, really. ” Her voice was frail.
“Mom …”
Catherine swallowed hard. “Treacher found a lump in my breast. I couldn’t feel it but who knows. They’re going to start with a biopsy. I’m sure it’s stage three. They’re going to have to do a mastectomy. ”
“Oh,” Joanna breathed out.
“I can feel the cancer growing,” Catherine continued. “It’s probably in my lungs. Yesterday I woke up with such a headache, and I just know it’s in my brain. We probably don’t have much time left. There are so many things I need to tell you before I go. ”
Joanna pinched the bridge of her nose, murmuring more notes of worry. Her mother was still going to the hospital regularly, though now she went to a hospital in Maryland. It had been a surprise when Catherine moved to Maryland six months ago, not long after Joanna’s wedding. Joanna’s dad had left promptly after the divorce, relocating to Maine, but Catherine had continued on in the little house on the outskirts of the Main Line, though Joanna had no idea how she kept up with mortgage payments. Joanna reckoned the only way she’d ever leave was if she somehow miraculously managed to find a suitable property in the Main Line proper, but when a great-aunt had died and left her a house in Maryland, Catherine had announced rather matter-of-factly that she was going to take occupancy. Joanna had helped Catherine move in and had visited almost monthly since to accompany Catherine to her bigger medical procedures. The house wasn’t very remarkable, a brick ranch with a carport, an unused, above-ground swimming pool out back, and a foul-smelling mix between a stream and a swamp beyond that.
In moving there, however, Catherine had acquired a new doctor, Phinneas Treacher, who eagerly supported every crazy self-diagnosis she’d dreamed up, ordering Catherine test after test, plying her with medication after medication. During the past six months, Catherine had had screenings for lupus, fibromyalgia, and restless leg syndrome. This winter she was certain she had mesothelioma—”It’s from asbestos,” she whispered, “and we had asbestos siding on our house when I was a kid. The lawyer on TV said that sometimes you don’t even know you have it. ” She’d also undergone countless tests for colon, lung, ovarian, cervical, pancreatic, and throat cancers, though they were all benign, and she took meds for type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, early-onset Alzheimer’s, and chronic pain. It was unclear whether she really suffered from any of those things, though Joanna doubted it. She was too cowardly to ask her mom why she was still orchestrating all these trips to the ER. Maybe Catherine was so used to being a Munchausen it was now routine, in the same way some people got up every morning and went jogging. The closest Joanna ever got to broaching the subject was when she suggested Catherine might seek a second opinion, but Catherine said that was out of the question. Treacher was the best. By whose standards, Joanna wasn’t sure.
“When’s the biopsy?” Joanna asked now.
“Tuesday. ”
“Well, I can be there Monday night. ”
“Oh honey! Are you sure?”
“Yeah, of course. ”
“You’re not busy?”
“I can manage. ”
“Charles won’t mind?”
“He’ll understand. ”
Her mother let out a sigh. “That’s wonderful! And perhaps you can come to the sail club with me after. ”
“The sail club?” Joanna repeated, wincing. Leave it to her mother. She pictured men in seersucker suits, with thin, foreign paramours on their arms. She pictured yachts in the marina with names like My Marilyn and Fantasia II.
Then switching gears, her mother asked her how she was doing. Joanna stood up straighter. “Fine!” she chirped. “Great!” She smoothed down her hair. “I’m at the market right now, looking for something to make for dinner. We have the greatest grocery store near us. Everything is gourmet. ”
“Well, that’s good,” Catherine said slowly, as if yet again she didn’t quite believe her daughter. Then again, maybe she shouldn’t. Not that Joanna could get into it with her mother. She couldn’t say, Charles didn’t respond the right way when I freaked out about my bitchy neighbors. Charles and Sylvie don’t include me in their family discussions. Charles brought up an old girlfriend in a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear. It sounded petty and maybe even insane. If she did say anything, anything at all, Catherine would just repeat what she said at her wedding: Don’t screw it up. Don’t you dare.
“Have you heard anything else about Scott?” Catherine asked.
Joanna said no, he was meeting with a group of teachers next week to talk about the situation. Just to ask him about the wrestling team in general.
“Oh dear,” Catherine sighed.
“I thought you said you didn’t think Scott had anything to do with it,” Joanna inquired, turning down the frozen-food aisle.
“I don’t. But I don’t doubt those boys were doing something. There was this special on CNN recently about how this group of girls banded together and tormented another girl on—what’s that site? Friendbook?”
“Facebook. ”
“That’s right,” Catherine said. “Well, that poor girl they were picking on killed herself, can you believe it? Just like this boy at Scott’s school! And I saw this crime program the other day where a boy was sent to prison because his interrogators wore him down until he was so confused he admitted to something he didn’t do. ”
Joanna stopped in front of a freezer containing organic pancakes and waffles. “Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen. ”
After she hung up, Joanna stared at the little screen of her phone, feeling the same emptiness and despair that overwhelmed her whenever she and Catherine got off the phone. And she felt like she’d voiced her silly frustrations with Charles out loud.
She dialed Charles’s office to tell him she was going to Maryland again, but before she could complete the call, she heard someone calling her name. When she looked up, Scott was standing at the end of the aisle, his hands in his jeans pockets.
Joanna dropped her phone into her bag, her heart thumping. “H- hi,” she stammered. Had he heard her talking about him to her mother? What had she just said?
“I thought that was you,” he said, strutting down the aisle. A red grocery basket was hooked in the bend of his elbow.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted.
Scott smirked and gestured to his basket.
“But … here?” She waved her arms at La Marquette’s splendor. Scott seemed like the type who would buy everything he needed from the nearest gas station mini-mart.
Scott wore an enormous red hooded sweatshirt with a drawing of a boom box on it and stood with his shoulders hunched. Two women carrying coffee cups passed. They glanced at both of them for a second, and
then moved on. Joanna wondered if any Swithin mothers were shopping here today. Certainly they came here—this was just the kind of place they would shop. She wondered who had told the headmaster about the possibility of hazing. A student … or a parent? A teenager would risk excommunication if he told. It seemed more the work of an adult.
“So,” Joanna said. They continued to stand in the middle of the frozen-food aisle. She didn’t want to start walking because he might not follow her, and then she would be walking away from him. Nor did she want to look inside his grocery cart—it felt like an invasion of his privacy. “H-how are you?” she fumbled.
“Eh,” Scott answered.
A woman with a cart cleared her throat, and Joanna and Scott stepped out of her way. Joanna looked at Scott. “Um, do you want to … get coffee or something? Sit for a minute?”
Scott paused for a moment, and Joanna winced. Of course he was going to say no. Of course he was going to snort and say, What, like we’re friends? This was a man who loomed over her and said, Boo.
But then he shrugged. “Okay. Whatever. ”
He turned toward the coffee counter. She started pushing her cart to follow but noticed the carefully wrapped parcels of meat at the bottom of her cart. They were the only items in there so far, but when she added up the prices on the labels it totaled more than eighty dollars.
She backed away from her cart as if it were a territorial dog. Scott turned and looked at her. “What?”
Her eyes were still on the wrapped packages. Scott walked over and peered into the cart. “Lamb?” He chuckled, though not unkindly. “I don’t know what got into me. ”
He shrugged. “Just leave it. ”
“Leave it?”
“Yeah. I worked at a grocery store when I was in high school. They make the workers put it back. ” He gestured to the front of La Marquette where there were a bunch of kids manning the checkout counters. They weren’t the usual pimply, gangly, surly grocery-store workers; the girls had glowing skin and ballerina posture, and the boys, with their tucked-in shirts and combed, neatly cut hair, looked like student council presidents. Joanna found herself wondering where Scott had worked.
She glanced at her cart again. “I feel bad. ”
“Jesus. ” Scott rolled his eyes and gestured for her to follow him to the coffee bar. She stepped away from the cart, feeling as though she were fleeing the scene of a crime. When she flopped down at a table, her cart no longer in view, her heart was racing with excitement. She felt like she’d gotten back at La Marquette for all its snobbish beauty, for all its cliquey women and baby carriages.
Scott asked what she wanted. Joanna gave him money, which he took and stood in line to order. When he came back, he sat down and took the lid off his coffee but didn’t add milk or sugar. Joanna stared at the faux-antique French posters on the wall, having no idea what to say.
“I’m so fucking bored,” he exploded, lacing his hands behind his head. “I’m helping out at my friend’s sneaker shop in Philly, but it doesn’t take up that much time. ”